Land of my (Grand)Father!: Lloyd George knew my Father!

Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th September 2020 - CL near Criccieth.

I promise I won’t go on about boilers....other than to say, it seems to be working fine. I must have over reacted!!

More days of fantastic weather. It is constantly sunny with a cool breeze but the afternoons feel positively hot.

The reference to David Lloyd George is because his childhood home was at Llanystumdwy, about a mile from where we are staying. He was also buried here.

For those that don’t know, he was the last Liberal Prime Minister between 1916 and 1922 and he held most other Government positions in a long career. He is the only PM who had English as a second language. The blog title is a reference to rumours about his promiscuousness. The only words were “Lloyd George knew my Father, Father knew Lloyd George!”, it is sung to the tune of Onward Christian Soldiers, with an innuendo that Lloyd George might have know my mother and if so he could be my father. I hope that makes it totally clear....I know why foreign people find it difficult to understand English when we mean the opposite of what we say!

On Saturday (after paying homage to Lloyd George) we walked into Criccieth with its lovely ruined castle and sweeping pebble and sand beach.

We had our picnic with this view. Later I tried to ‘eat out, to help out’ by having a nice piece of coffee and walnut cake.

I will do anything to help the economy.....as long as it involves eating.

Today, we cycled past Criccieth into Porthmadog. The harbour is very pleasant. It is an old shipbuilding port that exported slate from Snowdonia to all parts of the world.

We moved to the next bay, Borth-y-Gest, for lunchtime. It was rather prettier than Porthmadog and much quieter.

It may not be obvious but this is a picture of Janice talking with a plum in her mouth. I thought she has been acting rather more ‘elite’ of late.....or according to a recent crossword answer she is U, which is code for upper class, rather than ‘Non U’, which is code for me (riff raff). Apparently, people who are U say words like ‘napkin’ instead of serviette, or ‘lavatory’ instead of toilet.

We returned to Porthmadog to see ‘Ivor the Engine’. Do you remember the children’s cartoon programme.....I bet you do. I say that because the town is a starting point for the Ffestiniog narrow gauge railway and the West Highland railway too (it has little to do with Ivor the Engine other than maybe some inspiration). We tried to remember the characters from the programme. I will list the ones we could remember at the end of the blog so you can try and remember them too.